Travail

Creating is difficult. In fact, creating is downright bloody hard. In Travail, you take the role of an artist in the 1960s who works a day job at an advertising firm. It’s not what you want to do with your life – what you want to do is your hobby, your passion: comic books. The long nights after returning from work are filled with your pursuit of a new life, as you try to create your new work, called “Death Boulder Bones.” It’s difficult and time consuming and requires numerous edits, but you’re sure that if you can get it right then you’ll be on your way to your creative dreams.

Your comic opens before you when you start playing the game, and pages flip faster and faster until it looks almost as if your comic is moving. As the pages flip, it’s up to you to draw in edits that make the story tell as you wish. Draw in paths, walls, jumps, and more in order to correct problems in the story and tell it right. If you make mistakes, simply flip back in the book to an earlier page and draw again.

Eventually you’ll finish it. And maybe along the way you’ll learn about your own story, too.

(Please note that the trailer below is from Travail when it was called Death Boulder Bones – but the gameplay is the same-ish)

Travail is slated for a winter release on Mac, PC, Linux, iOS, and Android.